ABSTRACT
Emerging from the world war victorious, the Royal Navy could not be complacent about its performance during that conflict. Its success owed more to force of numbers and the contribution of allied armies than to tactical performance and material readiness. In this, no criticism is implied; it merely reflects that when a maritime power faces a continental adversary, it must frequently adopt the means of the latter if it is to prevail. That said, based on its war experience, the Service addressed the immediate shortcomings identified in shell performance, took the first systematic steps to coordinate gunnery and torpedo fire, improved its command and control methods, and attempted to capture the vital lessons of the war through an extensive historical survey directed by the Naval Staf[2 The Navy proved itself open to innovation and embraced naval aviation from the earliest days of the 1914-18 war, but experience had shown that the air weapon, though increasingly essential in supporting naval operations, was not central. By conflict's end, the capital ship was still viewed as the final arbiter of naval power, and the battlefleet remained the preferred tactical instrument in a fleet action.
